


the dead tree gives no shelter

by Llwy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Extinction Avatar Martin Blackwood, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24294466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llwy/pseuds/Llwy
Summary: Martin just wants to be able to help everyone
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 13
Kudos: 84





	the dead tree gives no shelter

**Author's Note:**

> I saw the idea of extinction!Martin on twitter yesterday, and decided to write out my own personal take on that idea because I really love it. Big thanks to Abby for helping me clean this up a bit.

He meets it when he is by himself. Of course he does, these sorts of things never happen to groups of people. When you hear stories of people having these religious experiences, true coming to god moments, they are generally solitary experiences. So it waits until Jon is off somewhere, recording the thoughts of a dead world, before coming to him. He’s alone, unprepared, quietly muttering to himself stupid, insignificant words, anything to help drown out the moans that fill the silence. It’s beginning to get to him, how quickly those wails and groans are becoming insignificant background noise. He tries to force himself to care but it feels artificial, performative. He wonders if the Lonely took more from him than he realised. 

It has been watching him for a while, it sees his hopes and fears and wishes and it knows that he is perfect. It has been slowly, silently weaving its vines around him ever since he first began to chase it, and when it finally,  _ finally  _ reveals itself to him he has little chance. 

It is, at first glance, a pile of hulking, rusted metal. Its hands are the broken scoops of bulldozers, and it drags itself slowly, ponderously across blighted ground to meet its chosen one. The spaces between its rotting iron carcass are filled with vines, the promise of new life, and when Martin eventually spies it crawling towards him, he is struck, first, by this beauty. There is not much greenery in this new world, and there is enough poetry in the image of nature retaking this pile of wasted scrap to speak to something deep inside of him. He can see a car wedged deep within it, see the plants that twine around the skeleton of its long deceased rider. 

Chunks fall from it as it pulls itself forward, detritus from the old world. Broken masonry, cracks patched with grass shoots. Old computer monitors with saplings growing past the broken glass of their screens. A thousand empty, discarded food wrappers raining down like snow. It brings silence, bright and clear as a bell, and the entire world narrows around it, bends beneath it, cowers before it. 

He walks towards it, afraid but wondering, hoping. It is huge, and the angles of its body make Martin’s eyes water to stare at. Many broken, sharp pieces stick out of it, and Martin is struck with the ease with which it could kill him. This is the least manifestation of its true self, and yet he is nothing before it. He considers running, but does not resist when it uses one bulldozer arm to scoop him up and hold him close. He steps onto the arm willingly, and he feels simultaneously a deep, terrible dread, and an absolute, unimaginable elation. It carries him aloft, clutches him to the mass of twisted computer towers that make up its heart. They pulse in tandem, metal casings expanding and contracting, and Martin can see the snaking vines and tangled wires of its circulatory system. The metal is red hot beneath the worn soles of his foot, but when he puts out a shaking hand to steady himself he does not burn. It will never burn him, it loves him too much. It makes no sound, so he laughs for it, long and loud, giddy and hysterical. 

It cares for him. 

And he cares for it.

  
  


\---

  
  


He wakes up later, Jon shaking his shoulders. He looks worried, his eyes quickly darting over Martin, checking for injury. Martin feels fine. Feels great, even. Better than he has felt in a while. He never realised how much of an empty space the Lonely had carved into him until he felt it filled with something else. The loing of humanity’s dregs now fills him with a great sadness, a pity deeper than he’s ever experienced before. He brushes away the remnants of tears and smiles. 

“Martin!  _ What _ \- Could you tell me what happened?” Jon sounds scared, one step away from outright panic, and one hand clutches at his tape recorder so tightly the plastic creaks while the other grabs Martin’s hand to help him up. Even now, eyes wide in terror, he is careful with his question, respectful of the boundaries that Martin set for him. 

“I’m… Not sure.” He lies. “I remember seeing something in the distance, don’t know what, then I woke up with you over me.”

Jon still looks worried, but doesn’t look like he disbelieves Martin’s words, and Martin is reminded anew of how much he loves him. This brilliant man, someone who cares so much and burns so brightly, who feels so deeply that it tears him apart. He chose Martin, rescued Martin from the cold grip of Peter Lukas, continues to protect Martin as they travel across the scorched earth in pursuit of a stupid, doomed quest. He feels his love as a warmth deep in the core of him, where before he remembers only cold. He feels overcome, full to bursting, so he wraps both arms around Jon and pulls him in for a tight hug. Places a long, lingering kiss on top of his head as he feels Jon slowly, ever so torturously slowly, begin to relax against him. 

“What did it look like? The thing in the distance?” He asks, mouth moving against Martin’s shoulder. 

“Big. Couldn’t really tell  _ what  _ it was, but it was big. Something to keep away from, I think.” It is not really a lie. Who could ever claim to truly know a god? Martin rubs circles into Jon’s back as Jon hums in reply. He can feel every knob of his spine against his fingers, even through the thick jumper he wears. 

“I can’t see it.” Jon says, after about thirty seconds of silence. “Whatever you saw? I can’t see anything ‘big’ around here. We should be the only…” He pauses here, trying to find a good way to phrase it. “ _ Unbound _ things around. I think we should move on.”

“Good idea.” Martin replies. After all, it no longer matters where he goes.

He carries this love inside him now. 

\---

Martin’s love does not manifest itself immediately. It takes a few days, or whatever pass as days as they trudge endlessly on through a largely unchanging landscape.

The Panipticon looms over them, a dreadful pillar against the blighted sky. No matter how far they travel, it seems to get no closer. Geography doesn't work the same as it used to, the rules of physical space no longer apply, but neither of them feel tiredness, sickness or hunger. Jon’s presence is a pillar, and he still favours Martin with small, heartfelt smiles when Martin whispers soft ‘ _ I love you’ _ s into his hair. 

“Yes, I love you too.” He mutters back, and it is almost enough for Martin to forget the ache of sorrow he feels whenever they pass by those poor, wretched souls bound eternally in the myriad hells that dot the landscape. But his god gave him the gift of compassion, a burning hot love he feels pulsating underneath his skin, and he can no longer give himself over to the grip of cold, foggy apathy. 

He wants to help them. He knows by now that he is unable to pull them from their nightmares, but his god whispers in his ear and he knows how he can help now. He knows that if his fingers trail across them and they dissolve into ashes it is a benediction. 

He cries, when Jon leaves to record, and his sobs yield tears of dark, viscous oil. They drip down his cheeks, and when he lets them fall to the ground they grow back up towards him as beautiful, crimson flowers.  _ We understand  _ the flowers seem to tell him.  _ We know that this world isn’t right.  _

When Jon finally returns, Martin is blanketed under a garden of his own making. The vines twist around his limbs like the touch of a lover, a friend, like the hugs he always craved from his own mother. And he feels the touch of Jon’s fear like a physical force, like the sun on starved petals. 

“ _ Martin _ .” He cries, falling forward to try to help. Can’t he see that this is where he belongs? “Martin, what’s going on? What is this?” 

He feels the sharp fangs of compulsion gnaw at his tongue, and the answer spews past his lips of its own volition. 

“It’s a gift. I know how to fix this now, Jon. I can save them.” He smiles with black-stained lips, and the weeds wind themselves through his fingers. He wants,  _ needs _ Jon to see the beauty, the absolute enormity of the gift he has been given. 

But Jon… Stops. Like a puppet with its strings cut. Martin feels the full force of the Ceaseless Watcher bear down on him and feels, once again, the weight of his absolute insignificance. He begins to cry, involuntarily, and Jon takes his face in both of his hands, presses their foreheads together until all Martin can see are his feverish green eyes. The compassion throwing through his veins  _ burns  _ at the touch of another god, and it hurts so wonderfully. 

“I’ll fix this, Martin. Just stay with me. Please.” He closes his eyes, finally, and the pressing feeling vanishes. “I can’t do this without you.” He breathes. 

“I know.” Martin replies. 

\---

Jon watches him more carefully after that. Is reluctant to part from him for even the short amount of time it takes to record. He grabs Martin’s hand to stop him, when Martin begins to peel back the cracked plastic of his skin to reveal the iron struts beneath. Wherever they walk a garden follows behind them, and Martin is overcome with the beauty of nature retaking the scorched earth. His lips turn up at feeling their roots dig deep, deep into the ashes and Jon’s breath turns ragged, pained. It hurts, that Jon cannot feel this, he wants to share this feeling with everyone. Wants everyone to drink from this endless fountain of love. 

“Can- Can you stop it?” Jon asks, days later. 

“ _ Strange to see the branches as living monuments-”  _ He starts, quoting from a poem that has been rattling around in his brain for a while now. It was something about using trees to mark deaths, he can only remember a few lines now but it feels apt. The compulsion slides off him because he doesn’t know, couldn’t answer even if he wanted to. Or maybe he is powerful enough now to resist the weaker compulsions. 

“Never mind.” Jon replies, cutting him off. He clutches at Martin’s arm, can feel even through the coat the burning warmth of care that powers him, and he swallows thickly. His next breath sounds like he is choking back tears. Martin takes the hand in his, feels his skin crack open further as he squeezes Jon’s hand tightly. 

“It doesn’t hurt, you know?” He says, after a few hours have passed, trying to reassure him. It even has the benefit of being mostly true. The world has grown quieter as they have walked, and the garden behind them is absolutely silent. The worms beneath the soil are finally, blessedly still, and the trees that grow from their cooling carcasses are more perfect than any inanimate gravestone could ever be. New life is to be their memorial. They suffer no more and  _ it is lovely.  _

“No. No, I’m sure it doesn’t.” He stops walking, looks down at their entwined hands. Martin’s is broken and yellowed, sun bleached beneath the watchful sky. Jon’s is broken too, deeply scarred and twisted by the touch of the Desolation. Martin wonders at how much Jon suffers, whether he would also prefer to be part of the garden. 

“It’s easy to give yourself over to it. It feels  _ good.  _ Feels  _ right.”  _ Martin smiles at him, but Jon grips him tighter and continues. “But you were better than that.  _ Are  _ better than that. I will  _ not  _ let you lose yourself to this.” It’s painful now. His skin cracks further and his metal bones grind together as the vines that weave between them are crushed. But he is pinned by Jon’s gaze. 

“But I can save them, Jon! I can help them!” He gasps out, words hard to grasp under the pinpoint stare of eternity focused on him. 

Jon gestures to the greenery behind them, and Martin can feel him force his way inside his head. Can feel the pain and suffering of the damned souls used as fertiliser. Can feel as their dreams, their hopes, their thoughts and names and lives and loved ones are all immediately extinguished. He can see the garden through Jon’s eyes, see the blood red leaves and the twisted towers of broken metal and warped plastic that push themselves through the soil. 

He can hear, from afar, Jon’s voice telling him that he’s sorry, he knows it hurts. And he cries, because it does. 

\---

When Martin’s god comes to him the next time, lumbering through the wilted remains of the garden, Martin grabs Jon’s hand. 

“Let’s go.” He says. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Title is from The Wasteland by TS Elliot, and the poem Martin quotes is Y Coed by Gwenallt. I didn't realise until I after finished writing this that there is no English translation for that poem online, so I guess in the world of The Magnus Archives a translation was written for it while our world is sadly lacking.


End file.
